21 June 1877 • 2nd of 2 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS, in pencil: CU-MARK, UCCL 11173)
Never mind about Harte—I mean never mind about being bothered with the letter. I had
to
have an outlet to my feelings—I saw none but through you—but of course the thing would
be
disagreeable to you.1explanatory note I must try to get somebody to plead with the President who is in the political line
of business
& won’t mind it. I have partly framed a public letter of advice to Harte, (to print
when he is 
appointed.) I told him, when we were writing the play together, that nobody would
appoint him to an office, or ought to.2explanatory note
To-night I read a little of my Bermuda MS to our little domestic crowd & got no
applause—they are a dull lot—then I read the W your Wilden Mann article in the current
number, which was received with shrieks of laughter & extravagant praise—Oh, a name goes for everything with these people. If I had written it 
they wouldn’t have seen anything in
it. Yet there are good things in it—I admit that.3explanatory note
They all want you & Mrs. Howells to come any time this summer & stay a week with us here at the farm on the summit of the hill, & longer if you can. Perfectly glorious here—perfectly bewitching. Can you? Will you? Won’t you? Come—say yes. Love to you both.
That is, Clemens decided it would be inappropriate to ask Howells to trade on his wife’s relationship to Hayes to prevent Harte’s appointment to a consulship. Despite the fact that Clemens withdrew his request, his two letters to Howells did eventually reach President Hayes. They were sent by Laura Mitchell, Elinor Howells’s cousin and the president’s “favorite niece,” to Webb Cook Hayes (1856–1934), the president’s son, who was serving as his secretary (Francis Murphy 1985, 88; Howells 1979a, 463). Birchard Hayes (Webb’s older brother) reported his father’s answer to Elinor Howells (CU-MARK):
Elinor Howells’s brother was Frederick G. Mead (1848–90). Howells forwarded Birchard’s letter to Clemens on 12 July. He did not share Clemens’s dislike of Harte. In April 1878 Hayes solicited his opinion on the “appointment of Bret Harte [as] consul at Nice,” having heard “sinister things about him from Mark Twain.” Howells replied on 9 April:
I am reluctant to say anything about the matter you refer to me, but I will do so at your request. Personally, I have a great affection for the man, and personally I know nothing to his disadvantage. He spent a week with us in Cambridge when he first came East, and we all liked him. He was lax about appointments, but that is a common fault. After he went away, he began to contract debts, and was arrested for debt in Boston. (I saw this.) He is notorious for borrowing and was notorious for drinking. This is report. He never borrowed of me, nor drank more than I, (in my presence) and yesterday I saw his doctor who says his habits are good, now; and I have heard the same thing from others. From what I hear he is really making an effort to reform. It would be a godsend to him, if he could get such a place; for he is poor, and he writes with difficulty and very little. He has had the worst reputation as regards punctuality, solvency and sobriety; but he has had a terrible lesson in falling from the highest prosperity to the lowest adversity in literature, and—you are [a] good enough judge of men to know whether he will profit by it or not.
Personally, I should be glad of his appointment, and I should have great hopes of him—and fears. It would be easy to recall him, if he misbehaved, and a hint of such a fate would be useful to him.
—I must beg that you will not show this letter to anyone whatever, but will kindly return it to me at Cambridge. (Howells 1979b, 194–95)
Howells may have feared that his friendship with Clemens would be jeopardized if his support were made public. Harte’s faults did not prevent Hayes from appointing him consul in Crefield, Germany, in May 1878, where he served until 1880.
References
- University of California, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, Berkeley
- Machlis, Paul, ed. Union Catalog of Clemens Letters. Edited by Paul Machlis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. [In some cases, UCCL catalog numbers cited in this volume supersede those assigned in 1986 and reflect corrections or additions to the catalog since publication. An updated version of the catalog can be consulted via the Letters Search page at MTPO.] 1986
- Christie, Manson and Woods International, New York City
- Murphy, Francis. “The End of a Friendship: Two Unpublished Letters from Twain to Howells about Bret Harte.” New England Quarterly 58 (March): 87–91. 1985
- Sotheby’s, New York, N.Y.
- Microfilm Edition of Mark Twain’s Previously Unpublished Letters. Prepared by Anh Quynh Bui, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Robert H. Hirst, Lin Salamo, and Harriet Elinor Smith. 8 vols. Berkeley: The Bancroft Library. 2001
- Howells, William Dean. W. D. Howells, Selected Letters, Volume 1: 1852–1872. Edited and annotated by George Arms, Richard H. Ballinger, Christoph K. Lohmann, and John K. Reeves. Textual editors Don L. Cook, Christoph K. Lohmann, and David Nordloh. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1979
- Howells, William Dean. W. D. Howells, Selected Letters, Volume 2: 1873–1881. Edited and annotated by George Arms and Christoph K. Lohmann. Textual editors Christoph K. Lohmann and Jerry Herron. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1979
MS, in pencil, CU-MARK.
Christie’s catalog, sale of 14 December 1984, lot 135, partial publication; Francis Murphy 1985, 90–91; Sotheby’s catalog, sale of 29 October 1996, lot 209, partial publication; MicroPUL, reel 1.
Victor and Irene Murr Jacobs (apparently) purchased the MS in 1984 from Christie’s and sold it through Sotheby’s in October 1996 to CU-MARK.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.